ERA15LA179 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM) to Richmond International Airport (RIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA179
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bell 206B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N43CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monmouth Executive Airport (BLM), Belmar, NJTo Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that the helicopter was in cruise flight when he heard a "loud bang," which was followed by a partial loss of engine power. He performed an autorotation to shallow water near a shore, where the tailboom sustained substantial damage. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine, which included an engine operational check, revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The loss of engine power that occurred during the accident flight could not be duplicated during a test run. Following the engine test run, the fuel control unit (FCU) was removed and tested separately. Tests revealed that the FCU operated erratically due to a bellow anomaly. However, because this condition was discovered only after the engine had successfully completed its test cell runs, a direct correlation could not be drawn between the condition of the FCU and the reported loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA179
- Event ID
- 20150408X11229
- Case number
- ERA15LA179
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eb2d16bbbb8c2f8776330b35a246ed880e6f67271f1c4f6c1e0445afd0114f5f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:13:03.585Z.